September was a bit of a hectic month for me. I didn’t realize it was over until I saw people on bookstagram posting their monthly wrap ups haha. During the last week of the month, I traveled across the country with my partner to move to our new home in the desert (Las Vegas). Since he did the driving, he got to choose the soundtrack. We listened to lots of podcasts, so I’ll talk about that in addition to the books that I read. I can’t read in the car, so most of these were read before we set out on our trip.

The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is from a Discord group that I am a part of. We created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers. So we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.

Hello and happy September! Today for The Happy Place 5, we’re talking about book recommendations that we’ve gotten from our friends. One of my favorite things about the book community, be it bookstagram, book blogging, or Twitter, has been meeting people! Naturally, since these people all love books and have read different things than me, I’ve ended up VASTLY INCREASING MY TBR.

I’m just sad that I don’t have all the time in the world to read everything haha. So anyway, today I want to highlight a few books I’ve read because of some of my dear friends! I picked only five books, but there are actually more than five friends. This is because a couple of these books I can’t remember who recommended it first, but I know all of them were shouting at me to read it hahaha.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Welp. I’ve absolute found both a new favorite book, and a new favorite author. This book was incredible, and I cannot wait for the sequel. It had everything I could ever want. Found family, queer characters, GIANT ROBOTS?? Ancient China inspired setting, vengeance, unapologetic rage, and so much more. Wow. I’m blown away. I couldn’t stop reading it, but I also never wanted it it end!! Maybe I’ll just have to reread it many many times until the sequel comes out…haha.

Hello and happy #SapphicSeptember! Just in case you weren’t sure what sapphic means, it refers to relationships between women. My friend Landice (@manic_femme on Twitter and @manicfemme on Instagram) is hosting a readathon this month focused on sapphic books. You can see her Twitter post about it here. She has a bunch of different prompts that look really fun!

So I was already thinking about sapphic books, and I had been brainstorming different things to try on Instagram – so I decided to make a book list. Instagram is obviously limited in how much information I can convey, so I’m gonna expand on my recommendations in this post! I hope you find some books that you’re interested in. There are quite a lot of books on this list (38 to be exact) so I’ll try to just post a few sentences about each one, so the post isn’t too long. I’ll also indicate the targeted age range (adult or young adult aka YA).

If you’re on Instagram, feel free to go check out my post! And if you feel so inclined, I would love if you’d share it (or share this blog post).

Well I guess the summer kind of got away from me, since I missed doing a wrap up post last month. But I’m back with an August wrap up! I usually talk about more than just books, but somehow I managed to read 18!! books this month, so I’m gonna just stick with a bookish wrap up this time. This month I’ve been just relaxing and taking care of a few necessary relocation related things, so I’ve had quite a lot of free time. Clearly this translated into me reading all the time haha. There were a ton of great reads! I’m going to separate my reads into different genres to make it less overwhelming for you all (and for me lol).